unclej

here's a thought...if you have to buy a bit for the project anyway why not buy a cove or chamfer router bit. the bearing should be the same or close to the same size as the hole for your control pot to stick through. you can chuck the bit up in your drill press, set the depth and route a perfect recess. the chamfer would give you a straight beveled side to the recess and the cove an oval one. well, i just checked the size of the bearing on a couple of bits and they were both 1/2 " which is considerably larger than the hole you need for a pot shaft but you can remove the bearing and just make sure that you're centered over the hole and that your body is secure and it should still work.

i don't have any older dimarzios or two conductor models in stock but the ones that i do have here say "dimarzio pickups, made in usa" and then at the bottom edge of the back plate there's a dp 103 on one and dp 213 on another which identifies the model. if that's not there man i don't have a clue how you'd find out. are they single coil or humbuckers?

i've used this style of front loading bridge on a couple of lap steels that i've made even though intonation isn't an issue on them. they're a good looking bridge and the string height is just right. i'm wondering if that pup in the picture is actually that close or if the angle the photographer used just makes it look closer than it really is.

i used the bat 41. i was going to experiment with a couple of others but they sent me some unrecognizable stuff by mistake instead of what i ordered. it's pretty amazing that something that little can make all that difference.

i raised the question a few days ago about whether or not the strawberry ice mod would work on a bass. i've tried it now so it seems fair to share the answer. i just got my first shipment of diodes in, wired up a couple of switches and have been trying them on every type of guitar i have in the shop. it works extremely well on guitars with humbuckers, especially hot humbuckers. doesn't do much at all on tele's and strats. but here's where it really kicks it. i have an old, beat up, abused gibson sg bass. it has a couple of pretty hot pickups that i dropped in it a long time ago. i plugged it in to a peavy tnt 130, cranked the treble and the volume up and cut it loose. it's one of the funkiest sounds you've ever heard. you could make your dog leave home, your parents disown you and your neighbor's ears bleed with this mod. by the way, you can try the strawberry ice mod on any guitar you own without hurting it. just pull the input jack and solder it up outside of the guitar. if you don't like it unsolder it and no harm done.

thanks for the heads up. i'd be using it for repairs if i used it at all and i don't need a bunch of customers coming back with bridges that flew off in the middle of a gig. although that is a comical picture.

nice..be sure to take plenty of pics. good luck.

sounds like a good project. i've had some experience with poplar and it works fairly easily and has a nice mellow tone. my only concern is with the redwood in the neck. granted, my only experience with redwood is as a deck builder but construction grade redwood is relatively soft. bass strings put a lot of stress on a neck and there "could be" a problem with warping. of course the oak may balance it out and i think it would be a great looking combination. i expect some others will chime in here and maybe they've had some direct experience with redwood in the neck. at any rate good luck with the project!

there's a product on the market called black ice. it's a passive distortion modification. turns out there's just a couple of diodes in it and there's a tutorial here on how to add an on/off/on switch and the author called it strawberry ice. as for why they called it ice to start with..just because it sounded cool i guess.

i've never had any experience with carvin but i've used both warmouth and usacg. i'm more comfortable with tommy and his guys. he's never failed to call me after shipping a neck to make sure i liked it. that being said you might also give allparts in houston a try for stock necks. they'll make custom necks for you but only in bulk. but they have a nice variety of stockers at a decent price and the customer service is excellent. www.allparts.com

i just ordered a few schottky diodes to try a strawberry ice mod on a regular 6 string and was wondering if any of you had ever tried it on a bass. if so, how did it sound and was there any special sized diode needed/

thanks for the input. now that you mention it i do remember reading somewhere about the ease with which fretboards and such could be removed with the hide glue. i'm perfectly happy with my carpenters glue. i was just curious. thanks again

i've noticed recently a couple of brands of hide glue in a squeeze bottle. has anyone had any experience with them and is there any practical advantage to them over a good brand of carpenter's glue?

hey ziki, just my two cents worth here. one of the major attractions for the teisco and especially the del rey models are the pickups which you say are missing on the one you're looking at. people buy them just for the pickups and then put them in lap steels. (might have actually done that myself) without the pickups my opinion is that they're just another cheap japanese guitar. the electronics aren't that great and the pickups were generally top mounted and the bodies very thin making it hard to mount a standard sized pup. in full working order they're pretty cool guitars with a funky little sound. without the pups they're not much use. again, just my two cents worth.

hey there fender4me...i've routed roundovers both ways. if you have a router table you're certainly going to be more in control of the process. however, if you can clamp your body down, route up to your clamp and then re-clamp you can get good results. just remember to keep a little pressure on the router aimed toward the body. did that make sense? if you keep a little more pressure on the inboard handle of your router you're less likely to rock it and get an uneven cut. as to taking the roundover all the way to the heel pocket it depends on whether you're bolting your neck on with a plate or with inserts. if you're using a plate stop your route an inch or so before the heel, mount your neck and then finish by hand. on most of my guitars i use inserts and route all the way around the heel. hope that helps a little. good luck!

thank you sir. i just added that to my unclej gets smarter files. i appreciate it.

thanks..if it's one of those it must be the same as mf because the catalog lists pf and uf. but i'm with you...i'll wait for one of the resident genii.

thanks for the question lovekraft. i was wondering the same thing. and since i know you'll be checking back in i've got another little question about farads. i found a good little tutorial explaining pico, nano and micro farads but looking in my trusty radio shack catalog i find pf and the u with the tail. is the uf larger or smaller than the pf?

hey gnome, thanks for the help. since they were fairly inexpensive i went ahead and purchased a pack of each. one is 100k ohms, 1/2 watt and the other is 100k ohms at 1/4 watt. i'm going to try them on a strat going for the hendrix sound. i'm fairly knowledgeable of capacitors and how they effect tone just from practical experience but what do capacitors do and how do the higher and lower powers effect it?

two different subjects here. first, i want to start experimenting a bit with resistors and see that radio shack sells them in either 1/2 watt or 1/4 watt. what is the practical difference between the two in a guitar circuit and which is recommended? second, i did a search here on stew mac's black ice assuming that they probably weren't too complicated inside and found what looked like it was going to be a tutorial but it was incomplete. it said that you just needed some diodes but didn't say what size or exactly how to wire them up. is there a better tutorial or link available? thanks

stewart macdonald may have something like you're looking for on their site. i know that they sell violin kits and parts and instruction books but they also have some tutorials. good luck!

never mind..dumb question..play like i haven't been here. well yes i can see the edit tag...and it works..cool

i'm wiring up my newest guitar and need to know how to check the continuity on one of the 4 wires on a dimarzio paf. i've wired two of them. each has it's own on/off/on toggle switch changing it from series to parallel. one works on both settings and one works on only one. thinking i had a bad switch i changed it out and it still doesn't work. i've narrowed it down to the black wire. is there a contact point on the pickup that i can touch with the meter to tell me if the wire is broken inside the insulation?

a buddy of mine simplified life even more than that. bought a garage sale squire for $75.00. put in one di marzio high output humbucker with just a volume knob and absolutely wails on it. blues, rock, whatever. gets all of his sounds out of his pedals.

the kit that i received had 25 sheets measuring 5.5" x 5.5" which if my math doesn't fail me is 5.25 sq. ft. keep in mind that this stuff is extremely thin and tears very easily so there may be some waste but one kit should be more than enough to completely cover a guitar.